The Paranormal Braintrust

The sordid history of UFO investigations by the U.S. Government dates all the way back to the beginning of the modern UFO era. After reports of UFOs being sighted over the Cascade mountains by a pilot named Kenneth Arnold, the term flying saucers had been coined and had permanently been placed into history. Several other reports by seasoned pilots and credible witnesses on the ground had pressured the United States Air Force to look into the growing phenomenon and potential threat to the American skies. From this, Project Sign was created. Answers were scarce, and the reports kept coming in. From here, Project Grudge was created in 1949, and no determination was made on just exactly what these objects were and where they came from. In 1952, the most visible and perhaps most famous of these military and governmental studies came in the form of Project Blue Book.

Working in tandem with the Air Force, several scientists were brought in to study UFO reports, and in essence, find a prosaic explanation for as many reports as they could. Perhaps the most notable of these scientists was J. Allen Hynek; an astronomer brought in to debunk the reports and show the public that most of these sightings were misidentifications or pure fabrications. At this point, Project Blue Book was nothing more than a strategy for the government to calm the public’s nerves on unknown intruders in our skies, and explain away each and every report brought in. This would culminate in the Condon Committee: an Air Force sponsored project led by physicist Edward Condon at the University of Colorado. The data collected by Project Blue Book was scrutinized, and the final word on UFOs was that they were not a threat to our nation, and they could be explained in conventional and prosaic terms. Yet, with 701 cases remaining unexplained by the end of Project Blue Book in 1969, this would be the final stance and official investigation pertaining to the UFO issue by the U.S. Government. At least, this is what the public was told. But all that changed in 2017.

Ryan Sprague Talks UFOs with Jim Harold – Livestream Replay

It was the article read round the world. Accompanied by three extremely compelling UFO videos, the New York Times released an expansive write up titled, Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program. Co-written by Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean, the article exposed, for the very first time to the public, a classified program within the Pentagon that was researching and investigating UFOs. We learned that from 2007 to 2012, the Department of Intelligence had spent $22 million on AATIP, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Under the request and initiation of former Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, who had a keen interest in UFOs, the black-budget program flew under the radar and with very little oversight, investigating UFO reports from military witnesses in the skies and military witnesses back on the ground as well. Not only did we learn of the program, but we even discovered the man tasked with directing it: Luis Elizondo.

Elizondo’s resume boasted that of being a Career Intelligence Officer with the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, the National Counterintelligence Executive, and the Office of Director of National Intelligence. With an extensive background in supervising highly sensitive espionage and terrorism investigations, it would only make sense that if this Pentagon UFO program were to work and continue to receive funding, the “threat” angle had to be at the forefront. Were UFOs a threat to national security? And if so, how and just exactly what were these exotic craft and phenomena in our skies? It was Elizondo’s job to try to figure that out. But just like many before him, he hit a wall at every turn, both internally within the Pentagon, and with the elusive nature of the UFO phenomenon at large. Frustrated with the lack of support and transparency of AATIP, Elizondo resigned from the position. But he most certainly wasn’t done hunting UFOs. This is where things get downright weird.

Tom DeLonge was no stranger to UFOs and aliens. As a former guitarist, songwriter, and vocalist for the band Blink 182, he traveled the world playing to sold-out arenas throughout the mid-90s and into the mid-2000s. As part of the growing pop-punk scene, the music of Blink 182 spoke to a generation of teenagers longing for rebellion and change in the world. And while most of the music from Blink 182 was riddled with raunchy jokes and pissing the night away with friends, there was an undertone of conspiracy theory, aliens, and UFOs sprinkled throughout. It became clearer as the years went on that DeLonge was responsible for these UFO-themed lyrics, and it wasn’t just a passive interest in the topic. It was an obsession. He’d spend hours on the tour bus absorbing every UFO book he could find. He would make pit stops in towns to meet with those who claimed close encounters or having worked on secret projects dealing with UFOs. His obsession followed him for many years until it became not only an obsessive hobby of searching the skies, but he’d make it a career.

Only months prior to the release of the now-famous New York Times article on UFO Pentagon program, DeLonge started a new company called To the Stars Academy of Arts and Science. The organization presently boasts ambitious projects in three distinct areas: science, aerospace, and entertainment. The controversial team behind the company includes not only former members of intelligence agencies and advanced development programs but the former director of the AATIP program itself, Luis Elizondo.

To date, To the Stars Academy has been responsible for major mainstream media coverage of the UFO topic and has assisted in pushing the U.S. Navy to change their protocols for reporting UFOs The company is also working directly with the U.S. Army in analyzing and implementing highly anomalous materials said to have been recovered from UFOs. It’s a lot to digest, and in order to continue their work, DeLonge created an entertainment sector that has already cranked out several fiction and non-fiction books pertaining to UFOs, an investigative television series on the History Channel, and several documentaries and feature films currently in development. Whether supporting the efforts of DeLonge and company or not, it’s undeniable that they have made waves in the intelligence communities, the military branches, and the perception of the UFO issue by the public-at-large through mainstream media.

Returning to the New York Times, we were treated to three very specific UFO videos within the contents of the online version of the 2017 article. They included the “Go Fast” video in which an unknown object appeared to whiz across the surface of the ocean at breakneck speeds. The video was taken aboard a Navy fighter jet from the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt off the eastern seaboard, near the Florida coast in 2015. Similarly, another video dubbed the “Gimbal” video doesn’t give us an exact date of the incident, but it speaks for itself in terms of importance. We see an almost “saucer” or “spinning top” – shaped object traveling across the cloud cover and then rotating, mid-flight in characteristics that can only be described as highly unusual. The final video and the most talked about is the “FLIR1” or its more pedestrian name now, the “Tic Tac UFO.” In the video, we see an oblong-shaped object hovering in mid-air and then suddenly accelerating and shooting off at an extremely high velocity. While the video may not be the most exciting of the three, the story behind it gives a context and amplifies the truly anomalous nature of this Tic Tac UFO.

So, originally this story broke with the cooperation of Commander David Fravor, a Top Gun fighter pilot, who was on a routine training exercise over the Pacific Ocean on the coast of California on November 14th, 2004. In the middle of the exercise, he was instructed to intercept a strange object by his superiors on the USS Princeton, an accompanying carrier to Fravor’s USS Nimitz carrier. As Fravor began to head towards the direction of the object, he noticed a strange churning of the water below, as if something were under the water. A few moments later, Fravor noticed an object floating about fifty feet above the water. He would state that it was about forty feet in length, it had no wings and no rotors. He described it simply as “Tic-Tac- shaped.” He said it began to move both swiftly and erratically. According to Fravor, The G-Force alone would have killed any pilot inside of this object. Fravor then watched as the object ascended and came right at his plane: “All of a sudden it kind of turns, rapidly accelerates—beyond anything I’ve seen—crosses my nose, and…it’s gone.” He would later tell the press, “I have never seen anything in my life, in my history of flying that has performance or the acceleration like this. I can tell you; I think it was not from this world.”

Fravor eventually landed his plane to report what had happened. Another pilot, Chad Underwood, has since come forward to confirm that he in fact, trailed the object and captured it on the plane’s camera system. But another interesting aspect to all this were the people involved with this incident on the carriers. In fact, if it weren’t for the following individual, this entire event may have never have been officially acknowledged. Or even worse, it’s possible it could have interfered even more dangerously with the training exercises occurring at the time.

Kevin Day was the air intercept controller and senior radar operator on the USS Princeton that day. He had over twenty years in strike group air defense, including war times operations. He had also graduated from the TOP GUN school, which is the most elite school of naval officers. For over a week, Day had been picking up strange objects on radar. By the time this intercept had occurred, he stated that his radar screens had showed at least a hundred objects, sometimes traveling in groups of ten or more in tight formation along the California coast. He said, “Watching them on the display was like watching snowfall from the sky.” Because of the taboo of reporting UFOs, he kept quiet. But according to Day, the objects appeared at an altitude of about 80,000 feet, far higher than commercial or military jets typically fly, so this was a red flag that something was definitely not normal. For a moment, they thought perhaps the radar equipment had malfunctioned. But after shutting it down and rebooting, it soon became clear that the equipment was just fine, and the objects remained on radar. It was at this point that Day even watched as one of the objects dropped in altitude at impossible speeds to right above the surface of the water. Day contacted his commanding officer and said that they had to intercept the object because of the threat it could cause to the pilots and the carriers. “I was chomping at the bit,” Day remembered. “I just really wanted to intercept these things.”

This is when Commander Fravor went up, and the Tic Tac UFO story solidified its place in the annals of UFO history. When asked his personal thoughts on the incident, Day had this to say: “The objects were aware. They were observed as having astonishing flight capabilities but reacting to us as if they simply wanted to be left alone to continue their journey. I don’t know what they are. But I sure know what they weren’t. They weren’t ours. Take that for what you will.”

After the 2004 Nimitz encounter of the Tic Tac UFO story broke, many other officers came forward to describe what they had experienced that day. As the list grows, it became quite obvious that this was an alarming event, and showed that while each individual did their job to the best of their abilities, there simply was no strict protocol on how to deal with the elusive objects in the skies that day. And clearly, something had to be done. Not only for the curious minds of those who wanted to know what it was, but for the safety of those who experienced it, and perhaps on a grander scale, the skies over the entire nation as well.

With mounting pressure due to the tenacious work by To the Stars Academy in obtaining the three Navy videos, and their continued efforts to work with military branches on deciphering these mysterious objects and their capabilities, Luis Elizondo assisted Commander Fravor in obtaining several meetings with members of Congress to explain what he’d encountered and why something needed to change in terms of reporting UFOs within respective military branches. And while the contents of these meetings would remain classified, one Senator, in particular, did comment briefly on one of these meetings. Senator Mark Warner, the vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated the following to the press: “If naval pilots are running into unexplained interference in the air, that’s a safety concern I believe we need to get to the bottom of.”

This meeting with Warner, and several other meetings with members of Congress and Intelligence communities, put the U.S. Navy in the limelight and they had no choice but to officially comment on the subject and even announce new protocols for pilots and ground crews to report UFO sightings and encounters. In an official statement to Politico, a Navy spokesperson said the following: “The Navy is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities. These kinds on incursions can be both a security risk and pose a safety hazard for both Navy and Air Force aviation. For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the USAF takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report.”

So there’s one last development in this entire affair that adds to the rich tapestry of the Navy, the Department of Defense, To the Stars Academy, and the UFO issue here in the United States: The Pentagon’s official acknowledgement of the three Navy videos and the release of them. In an official statement on April 27th, 2020, the Department of Defense stated: “The Department of Defense has authorized the release of three unclassified Navy videos, one taken in November 2004 and the other two in January 2015, which have been circulating in the public domain after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017. After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena. DOD is releasing the videos in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos. The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as unidentified.”

This statement shot across mainstream media outlets and once again, these videos circulated as if they were brand new. The videos came to a surprise to many, unlike most who’d spent every waking moment studying the UFO topic and these videos for the past two years, some even a decade or so ago when at least one of the videos had been uploaded to online forums and websites. So, while there may be a media-driven amnesia by most, it can also be argued that while the videos aren’t new, it shows that they were never supposed to have seen the light of day. It proves two other things as well; these videos were not hoaxed or fabricated, and they remain, even to this day, unidentified and truly unknown. With the tireless efforts of Tom DeLonge, Luis Elizondo, and countless UFO researchers hammering the intelligence agencies with Freedom of Information Act requests, there’s no denying that a sizable amount of progress has been made in terms of an official acknowledgement of the UFO reality by the U.S. Government. Elizondo, being directly involved with the 2017 release of the Navy videos, said the following in an official To the Stars Academy statement: “We are fueled by the Pentagon’s significant actions and hope this encourages a new wave of credible information to come forward.”

But the real question remains; is this the nail in the coffin in terms of Pentagon releases and acknowledgment of the UFO phenomenon? Well, for that rockstar-turned-UFO researcher, Tom DeLonge, he believes that his company is partially, if not completely responsible for the official release of the videos. In an interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, he stated: “I can’t believe we pulled this off. It’s a big deal, and so much more is coming. I think people need to buckle up.”

So, as To the Stars Academy continues their work, so do many other UFO researchers whose collective passions have only been reignited and fueled by all the attention UFOs have been getting. Gone are the days of retracing footsteps on UFO cases from fifty-plus years ago, and looking forward at modern cases dating all the way up to 2015. These cases are within reach, and many of the witnesses are still coming forward to detail their involvement. A new flame has been lit and it’s an exciting time to be in the self-proclaimed field of “ufology.” And perhaps DeLonge is right; there’s certainly going to be more to come, whether the government likes it or not. And as we move forward and rebuild our world after a global crisis, we can hopefully take an opportunity to rebuild the way we look at UFOs and piece it back together in a whole new light. Could this usher in a whole new era of study, perception, and acknowledgment of a legitimate and physical reality the UFO phenomenon?

UFOs exist, according to the Pentagon. It’s official. And some of the most credible evidence we have has been given to the public. And while many argue it’s not a lot, it’s all we have. And that’s a big step. But perhaps even bigger are the follow-up questions that remain; What exactly are these UFOs? Who is in control of them? And what do they want? Like DeLonge said, “buckle up.” It’s going to be an exciting, frustrating, weird, and wonderful ride as we continue to search for answers somewhere in our skies.

Bio: Ryan Sprague is a lead investigator and co-host of the CW television series, Mysteries Decoded, and is also a regular on the Travel Channel series, Mysteries at the Museum. He is the author of Somewhere in the Skies: A Human Approach to an Alien Phenomenon, and is also the creator and host of the Somewhere in the Skies podcast. His UFO journalism found him interviewing witnesses in all walks of life about UFO sightings and possible encounters with extraterrestrials. He’s interviewed military and intelligence officials directly on the topic, writing for such news sites as Open Minds Magazine, Rogue Planet, JimHarold.com, and Futurism. Speaking on the UFO topic, he has been featured on ABC News, Fox News, and the Science Channel. For more info, visit: www.somewhereintheskies.com

The idea of a classic haunting conjures many images of eerie old houses, graveyards, and spirits being forever trapped in the rooms where their life had seemingly ended. But sometimes these often reported hauntings don’t occur on the ground around us but in the skies above. And such was the strange case involving the ghosts of Flight 401.

It was December 29th, 1972. Eastern Airlines Flight 401, holding 163 passengers, broke through the clouds, taking off from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York City. It was a routine flight, leisurely touching down in Miami. At the helm was Head Pilot, Bob Loft, a thirty year veteran of the skies. He was accompanied by Albert John Stockhill, his First Officer, and Donald Lois Repo, the flight engineer. The rest of the crew consisted of ten top-notch flight attendants. All seemed to be going just as planned as they coasted through the air, their destination of Miami International Airport within reach.

As they prepared for landing, Stockstill noticed that the landing gear indicator light hadn’t turned on when it should have. Alerting the crew of the situation, he tried several times to cycle the landing gear, hoping that this would solve the problem. But it didn’t seem to resolve. Soon, Loft radioed the flight tower of the situation. Soon, the plane was put into a holding pattern over the nearby Everglades. At an altitude of about 2,000 feet, the plane was put into autopilot as the crew hurriedly tried to resolve the situation. Distracted by the supposed malfunctioning landing gear, the entire crew was oblivious to the fact that someone had accidentally turned off the autopilot feature and the plane was quickly losing altitude. By the time the crew was made aware, it was already too late. The plane crashed into an unforgiving swampland at a speed of 227 miles per hour. The fuselage disintegrated almost immediately, jet fuel sending fiery blazes throughout the downed aircraft. It was a tragedy beyond comprehension.

Stockstill perished on impact. Loft and Repo initially survived, but Loft died while being pulled from the wreckage. Repo later succumbed in the hospital due to major complications. In total, 97 out of 163 people died in the crash that fateful day. It was one of the most horrific and deadliest plane disasters in U.S. history. And while the tragedy certainly struck the hearts of many, the lingering spirits of those lives lost refused to fade away.

The aircraft was an Eastern L-1011 Tristar jet. Not long after the deadly events in the Everglades, both passengers and crew of flights flown in the same model aircraft began to report strange occurrences as they made their way through the skies. Many of these reports included sightings of Robert Loft and Donald Repo. They would often stand in the aisles, looking over the passengers. Or sometimes they would even be seated next to passengers, a cold dark stare shooting forward towards the cockpit.

One report, in particular, came from flight attendants who said they saw Robert Loft wandering up and down the aisles of the plane right before takeoff, talking to passengers and warning them to get off the flight before it was too late. It was then said that as they prepared for takeoff, Loft’s supposed spirit vanished into thin air. The crew was so visibly shaken by this event that the flight had to be canceled that day. Another incident involved the vice-president of Eastern Airlines. As he sat in first class during a routine flight, he assumed the man sitting next to him was the Captain and began to speak to him. It wasn’t until halfway through the conversation that the strange truth dawned on him. The man, sitting silent and staring at him was none other then Loft himself. When the realization hit the vice-president, the man that was sitting next to him faded away into thin air.

Another report came from a flight attendant who noticed an engineer fixing an oven in the galley (kitchen) of the plane. When the flight attendant later saw a different engineer who usually worked that shift, she asked who the new guy was that fixed the oven. He insisted that no other engineers had been on that flight and that there was nothing wrong with ovens that had been reported to him. When the flight attendant described the mysterious engineer, it struck a chord with several other crew members. They retrieved several photos of a man to show her, and she insisted that the man in the photos was most definitely the man she saw that day. All of the photos were that of flight engineer Donald Lois Repo.

Repo seemed to be the boldest of the two spirits haunting these flights. During a flight of Tri-Star 318, a flight attendant witnessed an apparition of a man who warned she and several other crew members that they should keep a lookout for possible fires on the plane. The flight engineer knew Repo in life and had no doubt that this apparition before him was indeed the man himself. Soon, the apparition disappeared. Halfway through the flight, the plane suffered major engine issues that caused a fire. The last leg of the flight was canceled.

It is worth acknowledging that almost every report of both Repo and Loft boasted incidents involving what appeared to be flesh and blood individuals, and not spectral entities. The only time that the events seemed supernatural were when an individual recognized Repo or Loft, and they would dematerialize before the witness’ very eyes. Another interesting fact is that whenever they were seen, they would often warn crew members of impending problems on a particular flight. They were almost acting as omens for some sort of disaster or preventing it altogether. The last interesting aspect of nearly every report is that Repo and Loft were never seen together on any flight or in any witness testimony, prompting one to presume that in the lingering spiritual purgatory high in the skies, they were working alone to haunt these flights.

One of the most contentious and intriguing aspects of this entire ghostly affair came to light when rumors began to spread that salvaged pieces from Flight 401 had been recycled and used on other Tri-Star jets. If one is to believe that objects themselves can contain the disembodied spirit of someone, then this most certainly was the case for the ghosts of Flight 401. Almost all reports of Repo and Loft supposedly came from flights that had pieces of the original plane attached to them somehow. This claim of using parts from a tragic disaster was contested for years by airlines who stated that they would never do such a thing. But many who’ve worked on the planes did admit that this was a common practice among airlines to cut corners and save money on construction of their aircraft, even down to the last screw and bolt. There were also rumors that once this notion of recycled pieces of Flight 401 went public, the pieces were swiftly and silently removed from other planes. Immediately, all reports of ghostly activity on Tri-Star flights ceased.

No matter the case, the actual presence of these ghosts had taken a toll on the airline. So many reports were submitted to the US Flight Safety Foundation that they actually published a response in their newsletter, in which they stated: “The reports were given by experienced and trustworthy pilots and crew. We consider them significant. The appearance of the dead flight engineer (Repo) … was confirmed by the flight engineer.” But Eastern Airlines itself did everything they could to distance themselves from these reports, not wanting a reputation of being the “haunted airline,” nor did they want to bring any more attention to the tragedy of Flight 401. No matter the case, the reports of these supposedly haunted flights pales in comparison to the loss of life that fateful day over the Everglades.

Eastern Airlines went out of business in 1991 after extensive labor disputes and a massive strike in 1989. And while the airline itself is long dead, the stories of possible ghostly crew members continue to live on both here on the ground and in the air. Perhaps the next time you find yourself on a flight, you may want to order several of those overpriced mini bottles of bourbon and gin. Because you never truly know if that person you’re sitting next to is an actual passenger or a ghostly tag along to keep you both startled and sober in the skies.

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Ryan Sprague is a professional playwright & screenwriter in New York City. He is also an investigative journalist, focusing on the topic of UFOs. He is the author of Somewhere in the Skies: A Human Approach to an Alien Phenomenon, published by Richard Dolan Press. He is the co-host of the critically acclaimed podcast, Into the Fray, available on iTunes & Stitcher. You can also catch him frequently on Travel Channel’s Mysteries at the Museum. His other work can be found at: somewhereintheskies.com

As we say goodbye to the last vestiges of Indian Summer and quietly wade through a colorful autumn, we cautiously prepare ourselves for a long cold winter. Thank goodness we have something wonderful to look forward to – CHRISTMAS!

Tis’ the season as they say. For many this is a religious holiday based on faith and tradition. For others it’s a time of giving. It’s the season of family, friends, food, and phantoms. Hey, even Scrooge had a visit from the ghosts of Christmas Past, right?

For those who enjoy a more “spirited” holiday, I’ve assembled a paranormal gift guide – perfect for the most particular people on your Christmas list.

Prices are accurate at the time of writing but change quickly this time of year, so your mileage may vary. Check out the links below where you can find ghostly gifts to delight the haunted people in your life. Plus, remember it’s OK to do some self-gifting, too!

SB11 Spirit Box – This is a newer version of the popular SB7, a devise that quickly scans radio frequencies. The spirit box is used by some of the most well respected paranormal investigators including myself. In theory, ghosts can manipulate the white noise or sound waves to communicate with the living. $136.00

Mel-8704 & K2 EMF Meters – A popular coupling of paranormal devices. The Mel Meter was developed by Gary Galka as a way to speak with his deceased daughter. It has proved extremely effective in paranormal investigations.The K2 meter measures electromagnetic anomalies in the environment, which could indicate the presence of ghosts. $149.95

GhostPro Full Spectrum Night Vision Camera – Take nighttime investigation to a whole new level with a full spectrum “GoPro” with full HD 1080P recording capacity in a waterproof housing. Simply awesome. $149.99

FLIR TG167 Spot Thermal Camera with Extended Range – Finally, an affordable option to the industry’s most sought after piece of equipment. At less than half the cost of previous models, the TG167 puts forward looking infrared capabilities in reach of the armchair, the amateur, and the well-seasoned investigator. $349.99

Dowsing Rods – For the Old School ghost hunters. These simple but effective tool of divination used for centuries to find water, gold, ley lines, and ghosts! The Haunted Housewives use these as a communication device on every case! $19.95

Ecsem Portable Wireless Speaker – No need for cables or bluetooth, this speaker work like magic. Just place your smart phone on top of the speaker and listen to clear, amplified sound! Perfect when sharing audio files with a group. This is one of the most useful pieces of equipment I have used in the past year. $19.99

BOOKS

My recommendations for the book lover on your list. These are works by some of my very favorite authors on various paranormal/occult topics. All available on Amazon.com

Somewhere in the Skies: A Human Approach to Alien Phenomenon by Ryan Sprague (Richard Dolan Press, October 2016) The first book by fellow Paranormal Braintruster Ryan Sprague. This is a fascinating look into the topic of aliens that will satisfy the amateur and the elite UFO enthusiast on your list! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED by many in the paranormal, including myself and Fact or Faked star Ben Hansen.
ISBN-10: 0967799589

The UFO Singularity by Micah Hanks (New Page Books December 2012) I’ve shortened the title but Micah Hanks doesn’t skimp on the information. The topic of UFOs is highly controversial but extremely interesting. Hanks keeps the reader engaged while fully delivering on the information. An awesome read!
ISBN-10 1601632401

NOTE: The prices listed are accurate as of Nov 23, 2016 and are subject to change or vary. The above are affiliate links that benefit Jim Harold Media.

Theresa Argie, The Haunted Housewife, is an experienced lecturer, educator, researcher and paranormal investigator and has had many years dealing with spirits, ghosts and paranormal activity. Theresa has worked beside some of the most well-known experts in the paranormal field, and has been featured by countless media outlets. She is also the co-author of America’s Most Haunted.

“Where are you?”, the couple asked, as they watched the planchette begin to slowly move again across the lettered board. The arrow passed several of the symbols, before clearly coming to rest on the letter “H”. Hovering there for a moment, the arrow began drifting to the left, now hovering over the letter “E”. After a pause, the couple felt the planchette moving beneath their fingers again, this time more purposefully, gliding sharply to the right and coming to rest on the letter “L”, where it stayed.

“Hell,” she read aloud to him, looking up to meet his frightened gaze.

Chris had never believed in the supposed “power” of Ouija boards. When he agreed to play this game with Jessica, rather than going out to the movies as they normally would on a Friday night, he had done it mostly for her amusement. But within the first few moments after the planchette began to move eerily amidst the symbols across the board, he became fascinated—if not a bit unsettled—at the story which seemed to now be revealing itself to them.

Through their questions, and the movement of the planchette, a narrative emerged, as told from the perspective of a young girl, saying she had died more than a century ago in a small town in the Western United States. She, like many others at that time, had been a victim of consumption; but this apparent conversation with a ghost hadn’t been what frightened them. In addition to being aware of her death, the girl also expressed a desire to be reborn, and through the lettered face of the Ouija board, told Chris and Jessica she would come into the body of their eventual firstborn child.

This hadn’t set well with the young couple, hence prompting Chris to ask about the child’s whereabouts.

“HEL”

“Why are you in Hell, if you died as a child?” Chris then asked.

“I” was the first letter the planchette indicated, followed by a pause. It then slowly drifted over to the next sequence of letters, “K”, “I”, and “L”, where it stopped again.

“I kill?” Jessica gasped. Chris had already felt her fingertips trembling across from his on the face of the planchette.

It would be the final word the planchette rested on that night, in addition to marking the last time either of them ever touched a Ouija board. The experience, though badly frightening for them, certainly opened the couple’s minds to the strange kinds of experiences Ouija boards seem to be able to elicit, as so many others have described over the years.

Among all the modern implements of the occult, perhaps there is nothing else that remains so disturbing in people’s minds as the Ouija board. Despite their sale as common playthings in most department stores today, there are a striking number of individuals, like Chris and Jessica’s story above illustrates, who claim to have had unsettling experiences with the devices. Thus, even in modern times there are many look to biblical passages as evidence of their wicked nature, such as that which appears in Deuteronomy 18:10-11, reading: “There shall not be found among you anyone… that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.” Similarly, many interpret this passage from the Quran to be in reference to such things, which it calls an abomination: “O ye who believe! Intoxicants and gambling, (dedication of) stones, and (divination by) arrows, are an abomination; of Satan’s handwork: eschew such (abomination), that ye may prosper.”

Perhaps the earliest historical mention of Ouija-like devices began to appear in China at around 1100 BC, although the rise of the Ming Dynasty coincided with the use of a stick or stylus crafted from the branch of a willow or peach tree called the “Fuji method”, which roughly resembled a dowsing-rod. By around 540 BC, Pythagoras and his students were widely believed to have used some sort of table mounted on wheels to communicate with the spirits of the dead.

The modern Ouija board, despite its similarity to ancient divination practices, appeared only as recently as the 1890s when two business-men, Elijah Bond and Charles Kennard, leapt on the idea to combine the popular planchette of spiritualist practices with a board covered in letters of the alphabet. On May 28, 1890, the duo filed for patent protection of their new idea, which became the first official Ouija board to be marketed and sold, with production duties handed to an employee named William Fuld in 1901.

The famous “talking boards”, as they became known, would first be marketed under the name “Ouija” by Fuld, who also rewrote the history of the devices, claiming that not only that he was the true inventor, but that his employers Bond and Kennard had stolen the idea from him. Once other companies began to produce the Ouija boards, Fuld sued many over the use of what he believed to be “his” design, until his death in 1927. In 1966, William Fuld’s estate sold the rights to the Ouija name to the famous maker of children’s games, Parker Brothers, who today holds all official trademarks and patents for the item.

Despite being generally marketed and sold as a plaything, the Ouija boards have remained controversial, due in no small part to the negative experiences so many have claimed to have with them. The famous esotericist Manly P Hall was quoted as far back as 1944 in Horizon Magazine saying that, “During the last 20-25 years I have had considerable personal experience with persons who have complicated their lives through dabbling with the Ouija board. Out of every hundred such cases, at least 95 are worse off for the experience.”

Some of the stories related to me personally over the years do seem to underscore the strange, and often unsettling nature of the Ouija experience. My earliest experience with such a tale dates back to my childhood, when my mother talked about an experience she had with a neighbor of hers, Nancy, while experimenting with a Ouija board. The story related to them during the experience involved a young man who, about a decade earlier, had become trapped under his convertible after he drove off the side of a bridge; pinned beneath the wrecked car, he drowned before help could arrive. After this experience, my mother maintained a strong aversion to Ouija boards, and was resolute in telling me not to use them, either.

On one occasion, a young man in Australia named Artemis wrote to me years ago, asking about whether I thought Ouija boards were “safe” to use. This was just after an experience he had with one he had obtained recently, believing his deceased grandfather had spoken to him through the device.

“What did he tell you?” I asked.

“He told me not to play with Ouija boards!” Artemis said. I figured that the response he received was more or less self-evident.

Perhaps the most unique story about Ouija boards ever shared with me was told by the American singer and songwriter Ellis Paul, who I met in 2007. “I have a song called ‘Conversation with a Ghost’ that’s about my one weird paranormal experience,” Ellis told me, during a live radio interview in Asheville, North Carolina. “I was out for a run with a buddy of mine named Vance in Boston, and he said ‘why don’t you come over for dinner?’ I said sure, and before we left we sat and had a glass of eggnog, since it was around Christmas time.”

“Once we got over to his place, his girlfriend, Margaret, was working on dinner in the kitchen, and I said ‘Well what have you been up to?’ She said, ‘I just bought this Ouija board for a dollar at a garage sale.’ She said she’d kinda been addicted to it, talking to some ‘spirit’ with a friend of hers named Beth. She’d been on it like most people get on the Internet, just going haywire. I told her, ‘You know, I’m kind of a doubter on that kind of thing, so why don’t we get it out as part of the dinner party?’ I thought we’d take it for a spin, and see what happens.”

“There were about fifteen of us there, and we went into the living room. I was the one asking questions to the ghost, whose name was ‘Pug’—Margaret Putnam was her real name, but ‘Pug’ was sort of a handle she apparently used communicating through the Ouija board. I asked Pug, with Beth and Margaret on either side of the board handling the little wooden triangle, ‘what song did I play last night?’ It spelled out R-A-I-N. Sure enough, the night before I had played a song called ‘Let it Rain’.”

Initially Ellis laughed about this, and noted that “if you’re gonna pick a title for a song, ‘rain’ might be in a good percentage of them.”

“Then, I asked ‘what’s the name of my booking agent’, which was something I knew neither of the women operating the Ouija board new. It spelled out G-E-R-M-A-N-E, or Germaine.” Indeed, this was the name of his booking agent at the time, despite the name being “misspelled it by one letter.”

The final question Ellis asked the board was, “What did Vance and I have to drink before we came over here?” As the planchette moved, it spelled out the letters N-O-G.”

“I got up and I locked myself in the bathroom for a while, freaked out,” Ellis confided to us. “I ended up writing a song about it, based on someone who had passed away, using a Ouija board to communicate.”

Ellis Paul’s unique story didn’t end here, though. “What’s even weirder about that story,” he told me, “is that after I calmed down a bit, I decided to go down to the Courthouse and dig through records to see if I could find this ‘Pug’ anywhere in Boston’s history, since she had told Beth and Margaret a few things about herself. For instance, she had been married to a doctor, and also described roughly the time and circumstances of her death. Sure enough, looking around I found that a Margaret Putnam had not only existed, but had lived there in Boston, and even married a prominent doctor operating in town at the time. I was floored.”

When considering stories like those of Ellis Paul and countless others, it becomes difficult to rule out the possibility that Ouija boards may indeed serve as a mode of communication between this world and the next. The view of modern science attributes no such “mystical” capacities to the function of the board, however, instead suggesting that a psychological effect known as ideomotor phenomenon can explain this, which similarly explains such spiritualist practices as automatic writing, dowsing, and other varieties of facilitated communication that purportedly links the living world to the afterlife in some way. The term was first used by researcher William Benjamin Carpenter in 1852, after which an alternative name for the phenomenon, “The Carpenter effect”, was derived.

Could the Ouija board truly be nothing more than a simple device, designed as a parlor game and long heralded since its conception as a tool of divination, which relies on mysterious functions of our deeper psyche? In truth, if this were indeed all there is to the “magic” of the Ouija board, one might argue that it would make the strange devices—and the bizarre stories associated with them—no less interesting. Whether their mystery stems from this world, or worlds beyond our own, it seems that there is much about the function of the human mind that eludes us… and hence, the inner space within each of us seems to remain, at the end of the day, the greatest mystery of our time.

—

Micah Hanks is a writer, podcaster, and researcher whose interests include history, science, current events, cultural studies, technology, business, philosophy, unexplained phenomena, and ways the future of humankind may be influenced by science and innovation in the coming decades. With his writing, he has covered topics that include controversial themes such as artificial intelligence, government surveillance, unconventional aviation technologies, and the broadening of human knowledge through the reach of the Internet. Micah lives in the heart of Appalachia near Asheville, North Carolina, where he makes a living as a writer and musician. You can find his podcasts at GralienReport.com and his books at Amazon.com

October 1st, 2016 was designated as the very first National Ghost Hunting Day. In celebration of this new holiday there was to be an event like no other – one that would reach far beyond the confines of the United States.

This was to be the night the Haunted Housewives, along with dozens of other ghost hunters, participated in The World’s Largest Ghost Hunt.

Over 70 ghost hunting teams from all over the U.S. and several European countries would simultaneously conduct a guided paranormal investigation. Each team would represent a haunted venue and live stream their entire investigation on Facebook for all the world to see. The teams were joined by participants who paid a small fee which was donated to local animal shelters.

This unusual holiday came about as an idea, a dream, that turned into reality with a lot of help from the paranormal field. The good folks at Haunted Journeys brought the idea to the powers that be at Scarefest – one of the nations largest paranormal and horror conventions held in Lexington Kentucky.

In cooperation with a multitude of ambassadors and dedicated enthusiasts, paranormal investigator Brian J. Cano (Haunted Collector, Destination America) was picked to lead the charge and organize this monumental world-wide event. His celebrity and reputation helped spread the word about WLGH.

This was no small task. Logistically, Cano had to unify hundreds of ghost hunters, haunted venues, and the curious public to pull off this complicated feat. The ghost hunt began with a bang – literally – a shotgun start at Scarfest.

The Haunted Housewives were one of the teams leading an investigation. Our chosen venue was Farnam Manor in Richfield, Ohio. Farnam is a historic gem nestled in northeast Ohio with an incredible array of paranormal activity and lively spirits. Our previous visit introduced us to the ghosts of Emily and Everett Farnam and we were anxious to return.

The Farnams’ is a tale filled with tragedy and hardship, interspersed with moments of love and happiness. The property on which they built the manor house dates back to Ohio’s earliest inhabitants. The Native American tribes that lived in the area considered it sacred. There is a special Indian marker tree on the property. This was said to guide the natives as they traversed the land.

Today Farnam Manor is a historic living museum with a paranormal reputation. Ghost hunts, lantern tours, and various gatherings are held at Farnam. It is also a fantastic venue for a brunch, bridal shower, or other “non-paranormal” type gatherings. But it is the ghosts that keep the doors open. Farnam Manor was an excellent choice for inclusion in the World’s Largest Ghost Hunt.

The night began with instructions to ask the spirits to communicate via ITC (instrumental trans-communication) using audio recorders. EVP (electronic voice phenomenon) sessions commenced simultaneously with all teams asking the same series of questions. But this was no ordinary EVP session.

Participants were asked to concentrate on the questions being directed to entities known as the Technician and Conductor on a metaphysical plane called the Timestream. (This refers to a little known paranormal experiment conducted in the early days of paranormal research.) The hope was that we would combine our efforts and communicate with these specific beings. This was a collective consciousness experiment called “The Bridge”.

Could hundreds, maybe thousands of people all thinking about the same thing at the same time have any measurable effect on a paranormal investigation? Could our combined energy, our intent, be enough to cross the veil between worlds?

Yes. It could.

In all honesty, I think attempting to connect with the Timestream was a bit vague and ambitious. I’ve been in the paranormal field for decades and was unfamiliar with the Technician or the Conductor. But I was certainly willing to try a collective consciousness experiment using Instrumental Trans-Communication.

We began our ITC session as instructed. I turned on the recorder and read the question aloud. Those that joined us eagerly gathered around and dutifully concentrated on the questions. We waited for 60 seconds before stopping and playing back the recording. My partner Cathi was also running a recorder so we had two files to review.

We repeated the series of questions twice. The EVPs we captured were amazing.

When we asked about the Timestream we did receive messages. Strange voices were captured on our digital recorders. Was it the Conductor? Did we contact one of the stations still operating on the other side? I would love to go on record and say that we cracked wide open the door between our realm and the next, that these voices were confirmation, but I cannot.

One of the questions posed to the spirits was, “How do you experience time?” We didn’t get any intelligible response to that particular question, just some low muffled sounds. But the fact that we got ANYTHING on the recorder was remarkable!

Another question was, “What do we look like to you?” Our recorder captured a low breathy voice that said “…normal people…”

The last question was, “How can we improve contact?” And in a very matter-of-fact tone the spirit answered “…you can’t…”

Well, that certainly was interesting!

Once our required line of questioning was over, we were free to conduct our own investigation. We still tried to have everyone participate and concentrate on each session en masse. The collective consciousness idea was working! We then switched our focus to the local haunted inhabitants.

The rest of the evening was filled with Ovilus and ghost box sessions. One of my favorite moments came when we asked what was the name of the family that once lived in the manor house. The ghost box proudly proclaimed “FARNAM!”

Who were we speaking with? The box said, “…Emily…”

What happened to Emily? The response was, “…drown…”
Emily was the name of Everrett Farnham’s daughter who, as a young girl, fell into a cistern and drown.

Over all we were thrilled with the results of The Bridge. Was the experiment a success due to the collective efforts of thousands of willing minds all concentrating on the same thoughts at the same time? Maybe. Or maybe the spirits were just feeling chatty.

The World’s Largest Ghosthunt was by all accounts a huge success. Many teams captured EVPs or recorded ITC sessions with answers to the provided questions. The Bridge was crossed.

The final tally of ITC sessions and EVPs are still being tabulated. Its a monumental task quantifying the submissions of each team. Hours of review and transcription is required.

2016 was the trial, the prototype of the event. Not everything went according to plans, There are kinks and technical issues that will need to be addressed next year but the idea was solid. The spirit of the experiment was honored. Everyone came out a winner.

The biggest winners of the night were the dozens of animal shelters that received the donation bounty. Another secondary benefit went to the various venues that hosted the World’s Largest Ghost Hunt; in our case Farnam Manor. This important historic site was, for one brief moment, in the national spotlight. Hopefully the publicity and awareness will translate into future visits by those in the paranormal community, which in turn will generate much needed funds. Historic preservation cannot happen without a monetary component.

Like many haunted venues, Farnam Manor is in desperate need of income to keep up with the preservation and restoration needs. Once slated for demolition, two of its former volunteers took a leap of faith and purchased the property in efforts to save it and its historic designation. Now their efforts combined with The Haunted Housewives and those involved in NGHD will make a significant difference in the future.

This is just the beginning. With any luck, the incredible results of the first National Ghost Hunting Day will fuel the fire for next year’s event. With Brian Cano at the helm and Scarefest as our mothership, we hope to see a bigger, better, more refined event in future years. With a bit of luck and a touch of tenacity The World’s Largest Ghost Hunt will spill out of the shadows and into main stream media.

National Ghost Hunting Day is long over due in my eyes, regardless of whether your believe in the paranormal or not. A day set aside to recognize the tireless pursuits of those in the field will help validate our work. In the past decade the topic of ghosts and the supernatural have gone from hushed whispers to loud proclamations.

And when National Ghost Hunting Day becomes International Ghost Hunting Day, the Haunted Housewives will be ready – aprons on, recorders out!

We’ll see you in 2017.

—

Theresa Argie, The Haunted Housewife, is an experienced lecturer, educator, researcher and paranormal investigator and has had many years dealing with spirits, ghosts and paranormal activity. Theresa has worked beside some of the most well-known experts in the paranormal field, and has been featured by countless media outlets. She is also the co-author of America’s Most Haunted.

Of the many and varied monsters that have plagued and terrified people for countless centuries, there are very few which are more frightening than bedroom-invading things known as Incubus and Succubus.

They are male and female monsters that, in numerous quarters, are perceived as having outright demonic origins. And they are hideous things that have a long history of diabolical interaction with the human race. As evidence of this, reports of these evil entities date back not just decades or centuries, but millennia too. One of those reports comes from Michelle of Corpus Christi, Texas, who had just such an encounter in 1993.

Imagine the scene: it’s around 3:00 a.m. and you’re fast asleep when, suddenly, you find yourself in a semi-awake state. Confusion and terror quickly overwhelm you, as you realize you are unable to move. Even worse, you sense that something dangerous and malevolent is walking, or crawling, towards the bedroom.

You struggle to move, but it’s all to no avail. The thing then enters the room and you see its hideous form. It looms over you, like a monstrous sword of Damocles. Your heart pounds and your breathing becomes shallow as the nightmarish beast jumps onto the bed, straddles you, and forcibly pins you down. The creatures screams at the top of its voice, in a wailing, banshee-like style, and proceeds to have violent sex with you – against your will. You try and fight it off, but your arms and legs are like lead-weights.

And, then, as suddenly as the horrifying encounter began, it’s all over. The oppressive atmosphere is gone, the evil entity has vanished too, and you find yourself shaking, and in a cold sweat, as you wonder if what just happened was the result of a bad dream or something worse: violation at the claws of a supernatural monster. That is precisely what happened to Michelle.

Encounters of the kind I just described extend back to the earliest years of human civilization. Indeed, the term, Incubus, is taken from an ancient, Latin word, “incubare,” which means “to lie upon,” which is a most apt description. As for their appearances, Incubus and Succubus can take on multiple forms. They are forms which range from beautiful women to hideous monsters.

One of the very earliest examples of such a creature is Lilith. Her name is highly appropriate, too: in English it means “night hag.” Not exactly the kind of thing any of us should aspire to cross paths with. Lilith’s dark origins can be found in the ancient mythology and folklore of Mesopotamia, and particularly so within the culture of the Babylonians. Despite the fact that she was described as being a beautiful woman, with long and flowing hair, there was nothing positive about Lilith. She would regularly manifest in the homes of sleeping men, slip into their beds, and have sex with them. The purpose of which, ancient lore maintains, was to allow Lilith to steal sperm from her victims and use it to create hideous, demonic babies.

Almost certainly connected to Lilith were Lilitu and Lilu, who played major roles in the lore of the Sumerian people, thounds of years ago. This paranormal pair, too, was focused on terrifying people in the middle of the night, violating them, and then vanishing back into the darkness from which they came. Joseph McCabe, a noted expert on these two demon-like entities, and the author of The Story of Religious Controversy, described them as “ferocious beings” that were part-animal and part-human.

Martin Baker’s encounter with just such a creature – in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada in 2007 – led him to conclude that, rather than being a demonic entity, his encounter with an entity that looked like Lilith was actually an alien-human hybrid engaged in gene-splicing experiments.

The people of Newfoundland, Canada have their own tradition of a particular shapeshifter. It is known to the locals as the Old Hag. For most people who have the misfortune to meet the monster, they describe it as a witch-like entity with long black hair and piercing, evil eyes, and dressed in a flowing black gown. She straddles her victims and either forces them into sex, or just sits on them, screaming wildly into their hysterical, wide-eyed faces.

Equally disturbing is the evil imp that squats atop a sleeping, beautiful woman in Henry Fuseli’s 1781 painting, The Nightmare. Combining horror with erotica, the artwork graphically captures the nature of these evil encounters. In Thailand, these creatures of the night are known as Phi Am. For the people of China, it’s the Pinyin that they fear. Mongolia has the Kharin Buu. While, in Tibet, the Dip-non should be avoided at all costs. And Pakistan has centuries-old stories of the Shaitan. All of these things perform the same, stress-filled and sex-based acts; yet, they take on physical appearances that suit the era and the area.

Every October 31st, Americans head to parties or hit the streets dressed in elaborate, often spooky costumes, in celebration of Halloween, a time when the veil between this world and the world beyond death is said to be at its thinnest.

We decorate our homes and yards with scary monsters, witches and ghouls, provoking a fun sense of repulsion of all things terrifying. We cut up pumpkins and light with candles, and watch out for black cats. We spend a ton of money preparing for and enjoying one of the biggest and most anticipated holidays in the United States, rivaling Christmas for some people!

But throughout Mexico and parts of America with large Hispanic populations, another holiday offers a truer reverence for the dead with a rich history dating back thousand of years. Dia de Muertos, or Dia de los Muertos, is the “Day of the Dead” to millions of people that both playfully mocks, and joyfully reveres, death. The tradition began over 3,000 years ago when Aztecs and other Meso-American cultures created rituals that honored the duality of life and death. One of their core beliefs was that reality was the dream, and that death was when we truly became “awake.”

Dia de Muertos celebrations lasted three days, as they still do today, and end on November 2nd. Because they began on the same night as Halloween, the two traditions are often confused and mistakenly intertwined. The major difference is in the tone of the celebrations. Again, Halloween looks at the scarier side of death, while Dia de Muertos celebrates it with colorful dances, decorative skulls and candles, and other festivities, including the construction of elaborate private altars called “ofrendas,” with pathways of marigolds that are meant to welcome the dearly deceased. The Mexican “cempasuchil” or marigold, is the traditional “flor de muerto” or Flower of the Dead. Altars can be decorated with sugar skulls and other foods and spirits (including tequila or mescal) that the deceased loved most, as well as pictures and objects once owned by the deceased. If the deceased was a child, the altar might include toys and trinkets including favorite candies. Families hold vigils at their homes, or at cemeteries, and take pride in decorating the gravestones of their dead relatives, leaving gifts of food, flowers and sugar skulls, or actual possessions that belonged to the deceased person.

Family homes are decorated with skulls and skeletons, made out of cardboard or tissue paper, and always colorful and bold. Because of the Spanish colonization of Mexico, often Christian objects are found on altars alongside much more pagan objects. This might include crosses, rosary beads and statues of Christ or the Virgin Mary.

As with most major holidays, food and drink is a big part of Dia de Muertos festivities, with cakes and breads such as pan de muerto (bread of the dead) that have been baked around a small skeleton or skull. In fact, the garishly painted skulls now most associated with the holiday period are sold in shops and markets, but those made by hand are most cherished. Some are meant to eat, and are made of sugar or chocolate or even wood, with the name of the deceased etched into the forehead, but others are purely decorative and have become a popular collector’s item in the Southwest for those wishing to give their homes a distinct Mexican traditional flavor. To show the difference between our Halloween and the Dia de Muertos, in our culture, a skull is an object to be feared and signifies death in a terrifying way. We even use it to identify substances that are toxic and deadly, while to the Mexican people, a skull is a symbol of life, death and rebirth.

Prayer and remembrance also mark most Dia de Muertos festivities, something we do not do at Halloween, even though Halloween also has at its roots a time of reverence and celebration of the dead before it became commercialized. Some cultures wear shells and use other noisemakers to dance around and “wake the dead.” Others actually wear the clothing of their deceased loved ones. From village to village, traditions might vary, but all would be centered on honoring, not fearing, the dead and treating them with love, respect and a sense of sacredness. This attitude towards death has obvious pagan roots where the cycles of life were not only understood, but also accepted and honored, unlike today’s more modern cultures that have all but wiped nature off the map and made death something to be dreaded and avoided at all costs.

Like Halloween, Dia de Muertos was altered by the course of history when the Spanish colonization of the 16th century prompted the Catholic Church to move the original August three-day celebration period to coincide with Allhallowtide, All Saints’ Eve, and All Saints’ Day. Yet, scholars state the original festivities most likely lasted the entire month of August during which the dead came back to visit their loved ones. These summer festivities honored a goddess, the Lady of the Dead or La Calavera Catrina of modern times. “Calavara” is Spanish for skull, and the word is also used to signify a poem playfully mocking the dead, a custom that originated in the 18th century. La Calavera Catrina is a fun parody celebration of a Mexican goddess or upper class woman, complete with little dolls called “Catrinas” and men and women wearing costumes with skull masks. They also might get tattoos of the names of the dead, or carry dolls of the dead with them for good luck, much like we carry a rabbit’s foot or tattoo our children’s and lover’s names on our bodies.

The use of costumes and masks no doubt influenced or at least coincided with dressing up for Halloween and taking on the persona of a spooky entity, ghostly being or today, a trampy French maid. In modern urban areas that mark the Dia de Muertos, children do wear costumes and walk the streets, knocking on doors to ask for a “calaverita,” which might be a small gift of money or some candy treats, and even ask passers-by on the streets for goodies, something our Halloween kids have yet to figure out (twice the candy!).

The Spanish conquest of the Meso-American cultures resulted in changes to their old traditions, just as the Celtic holiday of Samhain, a celebration of death and renewal which gave Halloween many of its symbolic traditions, was suppressed and absorbed by the Catholic celebrations as well, something that happened with most major pagan holidays and traditions (Easter, Christmas…). Dia de Muertos also is linked to an ancient Aztec festival that was dedicated to a goddess named Mictecacihuatl and was once only a day of celebration for indigenous peoples in a very specific part of Mexico, before spreading further into the world in the 20th century. Holidays honoring goddesses and women often later became morphed into Christian holidays honoring male saints, or degraded and disempowered the women figures, much like our Halloween took the pagan crone, a wise old woman, and turned her into an ugly, wart-covered witch. Because the Spanish who conquered the Aztec became the dominant force and religion in the Mexican region, their influences naturally became interwoven with those of indigenous peoples, when they didn’t completely wipe them off the map.

Recently, the Mexican government made Dia de Muertos a national holiday in line with educational policies enforced in the 1960s that encouraged the practice of national traditions that unified cultures and regions of indigenous peoples. Many modern regions in Mexico honor different things on each of the three days, with one day devoted to dead children, and one to adults. Children are honored on Dia de los Inocentes, Day of the Innocents, and Dia de lost Angelitos, Day of the Little Angels. November 2nd was reserved for Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead focusing on adults.

More recently, other nations such as Fiji, Indonesia, New Zealand and Australia have their own versions of a Day of the Dead, borrowing from the Mexican culture. South American nations celebrate as well, especially their indigenous populations. One of the more unusual rituals comes from Bolivia and is celebrated on May 5th. The Dia de los Natitas, or Day of the Skulls, comes from an ancient practice of actually spending the day with the skeletal bones of the deceased relative. Nowadays, they just keep the skull around, decorating it with flowers and trinkets, and making offerings of cigarettes and alcohol to thank the dead for watching over and protecting family members.

In America, the three-day festival now welcomes those of all cultures and races, who take part in enjoying a different perspective of the dead. Instead of being terrorized by ghost, ghouls and demons, those involved choose to celebrate the ones who have come before us with color, music, food and festivities alongside more serious prayer and remembrance. Though most festivities occur in the Southwest, a region with a high Hispanic population, cities throughout the country take part in this unique mash-up of Mexican and American cultures that, although they retain their classic Aztec origins, change with the times to adapt to new celebrations that honor the dead and embrace activism, environmental awareness and community involvement.

Sadly, the Spanish conquest thought the customs surrounding Dia de Muertos as being barbaric and primitive, not understanding the dual nature of life and death, light and dark, male and female, and other nature-related elements that were such a powerful part of the worldview of older tribes and cultures. Because of that, we may never know all the traditions and symbols used to show respect to the dead, since many of them were probably suppressed by Catholic Church leaders, who probably threatened punishment upon the lowly pagans who continued to practice such rituals and festivities. But like the old Aztec and Meso-American myths, their traditions remain at the core of many holidays we Westerners now like to think we created and evolved.

The subject of death is remembered mainly here in America as a time to mourn and grieve, as in our many holidays devoted to those lost in war or terrorist attacks. But other cultures that retain more pagan roots, while grieving death (as we are all human), instead look upon it as one part of a cycle or a wheel that turns over and over again, just as the natural world is a wheel of planting, harvesting, and planting again. Because our ancestors were so in tune with the earth’s cycles, whether they be the phases of the moon, the shifting tides, the changing seasons or the growth of animals, plants and humans evolving towards death, they came to see each part of the cycle as something to be cherished, and not feared or dreaded. Without death, there cannot be room for new life. Without the change of seasons, there can be no renewal of plant life in the spring, and new harvests of crops in the fall. Everything was in tune and in perfect order and harmony.

The Dia de Muertos may be just a time to party and eat great food and wear crazy skull masks for many people. But to millions of others around the world, it is an acknowledgement of a critical part of the ever-spinning wheel of existence, and a way to thank those who came before us and were a part of that wheel.

THE TERRIFYING TRUTH BEHIND HORROR MOVIES

Every Halloween season brings forth the cozy sweaters, the pumpkin-spiced drinks, and the undeniable beauty of autumn colors. But for me, it brings out something else. It’s the only time of the year that I sit down every single night and watch a horror movie.

This has in more recent years been dubbed, “Shocktober” when many consume horror movies on a daily basis. Maybe it’s the young boy in me wanting to challenge my level of fear and masculinity, or perhaps it could even be the curiosity deep down of what I would do if thrust into the horrified shoes of those being victimized. Either way, I would crawl into the corner of the couch, turn off the lights, and watch from a safe distance as the terror unfolded on the screen. But the more I watched, the more I became interested in just exactly what inspired the dark and deranged minds of those who’d created these movies. I was surprised to find that more than a fair share had been inspired by true events. And that, more than anything, became all the more terrifying. Here is just a small glimpse of some of those films based on true stories.

The Exorcist (1973)

Perhaps the most classic supernatural horror film in modern history, The Exorcist, swept the nation and made the world fear the Devil unlike ever before. Directed by William Friedkin and written by William Peter Blatty, this demon-possession film was based on Blatty’s original novel of the same name. The novel wasn’t entirely dreamt up, however, and was steeped in much reality.

In 1948, a young boy known by the alias of “Robbie Mannheim,” began to act very odd in his hometown of Cottage City, Maryland. He’d spit, shout profanities, and would suffer deep scratches all over his body. His family soon called in a group of priests of different faiths and the activity intensified. Edward Hughes, a Roman Catholic priest, claimed that when he placed a Bible to the boy’s forehead, Robbie began to levitate and the bed below him started to vibrate. When the priest asked who seemed to be in control of the boy, a harsh voice spewed from his mouth, proclaiming “I am legion.” As the activity progressed, the family thought that moving to a new home would help calm the demon within the boy. But it didn’t. Now in St. Louis, Missouri, the priests were called in once again. Confined to a psychiatric ward of a hospital, six weeks of exorcisms were performed on the boy. During this time, scratches appeared all over his body from out of nowhere, guttural voices erupting from the boy spouting expletives and hate. The priests had only one defense left to try to rid young Robbie of the demon. They baptized him, forcing a communion wafer into his mouth. While the effects weren’t immediate, within days, he seemed to be devoid of any further possession.

While the film, The Exorcist, portrayed a young girl with much more horrifying experiences, there is no doubt that this story was just as scary, if true. The testimony of the priests involved holds much weight, one even claiming that he was thrown across the room at one point during the baptism/exorcism. And while the movie version went on to become one of the most successful films in history, for young Robbie, the memories of his experience presumably live on. And one can only hope that the demons within him will stay at bay for many years to come.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)

This film came to us from the director, Charles B. Pierce, who is best known for his 1972 cult-classic docudrama, The Legend of Boggy Creek. In this 1976 slasher movie, a small town Texas Ranger is investigating a slew of gruesome murders by a hooded serial killer known only as the Phantom. This predecessor to 1978’s Halloween, was raw and gritty, following the predator on his murderous rampage of young lovers in the town. While this plot may seem simple, it became much more complex when I learned that it was based on an actual unsolved string of murders in Texarkana, Arkansas.

To learn more about the actual case, I interviewed documentary filmmaker, Joshua Zeman, who investigated this case heavily in a one hour special on Chiller TV, titled, Killer Legends. Zeman learned that the murders in Texarkana were dubbed, “The Moonlight Murders.” Four brutal crimes occurred in less than three months. The first of the crimes took place with young couples who were parked at several “Lover’s Lanes” in the area. The fourth crime was the shooting of a couple in their farmhouse on the outskirts of town. By the end of the supposed rampage, several were severely wounded, and five people had been shot dead.

But the story of the Moonlight Murders didn’t end there. Zeman also discovered that once the film that was made, the town didn’t turn away from it. They embraced it. They would hold an annual screening during the Halloween season on the grounds where some the murders had taken place. It had become somewhat of a sense of pride to the town. So much so, that another version of the film with the same title was released in 2014 in which a copycat killer who saw the 1976 version began to terrorize the town in the same fashion almost sixty-five years later. The meta nature of this entire string of events was almost too hard to believe, but it soon became clear that anything to draw publicity to a small town struggling to survive would be welcomed. Even at the dismay of the original victims and their families. To hear the entire interview about the Moonlight Murders with Joshua Zeman, CLICK HERE

The Entity (1982)

Carla wakes up from a peaceful sleep to the worst nightmare she could imagine. She is being brutally assaulted by an unknown and unseen presence. Completely traumatized, she reaches out to friends and family who believe she has gone crazy. This is when she enlists the assistance of two parapsychologists to investigate. They discover that there is a dark and evil spirit attached to Carla, and it isn’t through with her. The true story behind this film was inspired by the strikingly similar experience of Doris Bither in 1974.

While at a California bookstore, Blither approached two men who she’d overheard were talking about investigating a haunted home nearby. She explained to them that she believed her home also to have some sort of entity haunting it, and she wanted them to investigate. One of these men was Kerry Gaynor, an associate of the now-famous Dr. Barry Taff. Soon, they were learning all about Doris’ current living situation. She was in her mid-thirties, a single Mom of four children, an alcoholic, and suffered serious emotional distress. Gaynor and Dr. Taff were hesitant to take on the case, worried that her claim of hauntings was just a mask for her personal life. But they agreed to at least assess the situation in the home.

Dr. Taff arrived to see a home in complete disarray. The house was unlivable, and her children seemed to have to fend for themselves to eat. It was clear that this was not something Dr. Taff could work with, and he decided to leave, claiming that Doris was very uncooperative, to begin with, even though she had been the one to ask for help. This all changed one evening when she called Dr. Taff pleading for his help. Apparently, the violent activity in the home had intensified and that it was now hurting her children as well. Dr. Taff and a team of investigators documented what they believed were four different manifestations haunting the home. One was a harmless old man that never caused trouble. But the others weren’t as innocent. Things in the home would begin to levitate and be thrown across the room, and the family was being attacked on a daily basis. But Doris seemed to be the centerpiece of the supposed evil spirits. Witnesses claimed to see her attacked by an invisible force that threw her against a wall, punched, and slapped. Immediately, Dr. Taff assembled a team of photographers to accompany Doris in her bedroom one night. He asked Doris to provoke the entities, and soon, a green mist appeared, morphing into a male figure. Sadly, little could be seen on the photos taken, but one curious photo of Doris, sitting on her bed, showed a strange arc of light over her head.

Eventually, she moved her family to Texas, hoping this would end the traumatic attacks of the entities, but she did report that it had followed her and the rampage continued. Very little is known of what happened to her and her family after that. But according to one of her children, she had died in 1995. Was this the final confrontation between the entity and Doris? We’ll never truly know. But we now have this 1982 horror film to cast a dark shadow on the tragic happenings of Doris Blither.

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Perhaps the most unique slasher film in horror history, this killer not only hunted down his victims in real-life, but he did so in their dreams. Freddy Kruger, dawning his now iconic sweater, hat, and claws, has become an international cultural icon, spawning one of the most successful movie franchises of all time. But no good idea comes without some sort of inspiration. And as I soon learned, the brilliantly gruesome idea for the film, according to the creator, Wes Craven, originated from a very unlikely source.

In various interviews about how he came up with the idea of “a nightmare that could kill.” He admitted that it came from a newspaper article he’d come across in which the deaths of several South East Asian refugees were unsolved. The refugees, seventeen men, and one woman had fled to the United States in 1975, fearing the horrible genocide taking place in their communist province of Hmong during the Vietnam War. Most of them took refuge in Minnesota and California, adjusting to a modern American world. This caused a great deal of anxiety and a sense of isolation, especially since they spoke very little English. The transition was so intense that many of the eighteen refugees immediately sought out doctor’s to treat outbreaks of imaginary venereal diseases and parasites that they truly believed were thriving under their skin.

The paranoia only intensified, and tragically, all eighteen refugees were found dead in their beds, the cause of death being attributed to “Probable Cardiac Arrhythmia.” However, other doctors attributed their deaths to something known as “Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome.” This is a condition that seemed only to affect young Hmong males, as well as Filipinos. Victims seem to die of fright and a core belief that what happened in their dream was in fact reality.

In Hmong culture, a spirit called “dab tsuam,” often takes the form of a woman, snatching men while they sleep and taking them to the spirit world. There the dab tsuam will torture and kill them. Hmong men would go so far as to dress like a woman before falling asleep, hoping to fool the spirit from taking them. In many instances, this legend has become fodder for many claims of sleep paralysis, but going one step further, it had indeed been connected to Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome as well.

These horrific deaths of the refugees were a great tragedy to those seeking a better life in America. But without a chance glance at an article one day, the world may never have been introduced to the burnt and scarred monster we love to hate in the form of Freddy Kruger. And as he continues to haunt our nightmares on the silver screen, we can only hope that the impetus of “Freddy” remains a tragedy that never repeats itself again.

The Conjuring (2013)

Considered a modern-day classic, this strikingly authentic film came to us from the brilliant direction of James Wan, best known for his work on the original Saw movie, and 2010’s Insidious. In the film, we follow a duo of paranormal investigators who are also husband and wife. They are summoned to the home of Carolyn and Roger Perron. The Perrons and their five daughters have recently moved into a farmhouse where a supernatural force seems to be present. The events in the home take a drastic and horrifying turn as the investigators uncover the troubling history of the farmhouse. While this uniquely stylized film garnered much praise for its original content, it was based heavily on real events and real people.

Ed and Lorraine Warren were indeed a married couple who were also paranormal investigators. In 1952, they founded the New England Society for Psychic Research. They are most notably recognized for their work on the Amityville incident, and to a much lesser and controversial extent, The Enfield Poltergeist case that became the basis of the sequel to The Conjuring. But this case out of Harrisville, Road Island with the Perron family would be one of the Warren’s greatest challenges.

The Perrons claimed that they were experiencing both haunting and spiritual possessions amongst the family of five daughters. The claims consisted of both harmless and angry spirits moving things around the home, causing unbearable stenches, slamming doors shut, and in dramatic fashion, levitating the beds of the children at 5:15 in the morning. As the activity increased, and progressively became more dangerous, the Warrens dug deep to find out the history behind the farmhouse and the property, hoping this would help find some answers and a possible resolution. What they found was horrific in nature. Over eight generations of families had lived and died on the property, including 93-year-old Mrs. John Arnold, who’d hung herself from the rafters in a nearby barn. Several other suicides had taken place there as well, including more hangings and poisonings. Even more tragic was the unsolved rape and murder of eleven-year-old Prudence Arnold. It was also reported that there were two drownings in the creek near the home and four men had mysteriously frozen to death on the property. With so many gruesome acts having been committed in this area, it was no wonder that so much paranormal activity seemed to be plaguing the Perron family.

While the film portrayed the Warrens in a very altruistic and heroic light, performing a successful exorcism of the home towards the end of the film, the Perron daughters claimed that this was anything but the truth. Apparently, the Warrens were not successful in their cleansing endeavors. And while their intentions were good, the activity seemed only to get worse with the Warrens present. Fearing for his family’s safety and lives, the father, Roger Perron demanded that the Warrens leave and never return. This contention between the actual events and the film would only continue in the sequel, The Conjuring 2, where the Warrens were once again portrayed as heroes and being much more involved in these cases than they were. More about this contention can be heard directly from the eldest daughter, Andrea Perron, in an extensive interview with Jim Harold by CLICKING HERE.

Conclusions

Whether we like it or not, horror movies have become a cultural staple in our lives, inducing some of the most primal reactions and emotions we can muster. They make us fear the unknown, prepare for the worst, and most importantly, play out our worst nightmares from a safe distance of imagination. But when we discover that some of these terrifying and disturbing movies are directly connected to actual events, it blurs the lines between reality and fantasy with haunting results. And it proves, that when we sit down to watch our greatest fears be played out before our wide or covered eyes, sometimes the truth is far scarier than anything we could create in the darkest corner of our minds.

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Ryan Sprague is a professional playwright & screenwriter in New York City. He is also an investigative journalist, focusing on the topic of UFOs. He is the author of the upcoming book, Somewhere in the Skies: A Human Approach to an Alien Phenomenon, published by Richard Dolan Press. He is the co-host of the critically acclaimed podcast, Into the Fray, available on iTunes & Stitcher. His other work can be found at somewhereintheskies.com

The modern world, despite what is afforded us by science and discovery, is still very much a place of mystery. To the open-minded thinker, a world of possibility exists here, where, through logic and reason, we may be able to glean new ways of understanding the nature of the physical universe.

It has been this essential credo that, for nearly two decades now, has kept me passionate about the study of the unexplained. By the time I was in my early 20s, I was writing articles on the subject of mysteries, and though my skepticism has become more focused over the years, my fundamental curiosity about unusual things remains strong. Hence, I’ve often take my interests beyond the written page and have ventured into the field, investigating odd claims that include everything from purported sightings of unidentified animals, to stories about weird things seen in the sky that seem to defy logic.

One area of interest that I’ve been less involved with is that of purported “cattle mutilations,” though this isn’t to say I’ve never had a run-in with the phenomenon (as we’ll see shortly). Beginning during the middle 1970s, reports of cattle being found drained of blood, as well as having certain soft tissues around the mouth and other areas removed, began to make headlines. Subsequent concern over this mystery led to involvement by the FBI, who have made available a number of their documents about investigations into cattle mutilations at their website, www.FBI.gov. Perhaps most alarming had been that many alleged mutilations coincided with sightings of strange lights, and hence, many began to believe that the cattle mutilation phenomenon was somehow connected with reports of UFOs over the Americas at that time.

Researcher Christopher O’Brien pointed out to me a few years ago that one of the earliest incidents involving an apparent mutilation of livestock had actually involved a horse, rather than a cow. The incident in question occurred on September 9, 1967, when Mrs. Agnes King of Alamosa, Colorado, accompanied by her son Harry, discovered the body of their horse, Lady, who’s three years old at the time of death. Lady’s curious death possessed many of the familiar tropes of future mutilations, which included removal of the skin covering the horse’s head and upper neck, along with the removal of flesh. The Kings noted the presence of what appeared to be very precise incisions, which bore cuts along lines that seemed far too controlled to have been carried out by any animal. There was no blood, and during a later interview about the incident, Harry King would state that he had smelled a strong aroma at the site of Lady’s death, which he described as “medicinal.” Law enforcement could cite “no earthly causes” for the animal’s death, which led to speculation about popular sightings of UFOs at the time. Hence, Lady’s mysterious death, preceding more popular livestock mutilations and death by nearly a decade, nonetheless became the first to associate purported extraterrestrial activity with the phenomenon.

Which brings us to my own experience with livestock mutilations. Several years ago, a news report on our local station here in Asheville, North Carolina, detailed a number of mysterious cattle deaths on a ranch in a neighboring county. Little was said about the cause of death, apart from the fact that law enforcement was investigating, and that a group of biologists, one of whom worked at the time with the Western North Carolina Nature Center, had been brought along to help determine whether the deaths might involve some kind of predator in the region.

Soon after the report had aired, I contacted a friend at the television news station, and asked if footage of the dead cattle was still available, to which I was told that the tapes had already been wiped (this was standard practice, I was told, and that the footage had not been removed for any “sinister” reasons). I then contacted the Sheriff’s Department for the county in question and inquired about their investigation, as well as the Western North Carolina Nature Center, hoping for any leads that might become available there.

Numerous queries with the aforementioned law enforcement group yielded no results. Then, within days of the initial news report on the cattle deaths, a statement was released by the department, which told a story that was almost as unusual as the initial animal deaths had been. According to law enforcement, a stakeout with the property owners over the course of three subsequent evenings led to the observation of a large, feral dog, which had been attacking the cattle late at night. The officers and property owners had allegedly observed this large dog latching onto the noses of the cattle, wrestling them to the ground and killing them in this way.

The explanation was patently absurd. No dog—feral or otherwise—would have slaughtered a cow in this way, let alone their being much possibility that such a method, had it been attempted, would have rendered a successful kill. Around this time, I was contacted by one of the biologists with the Nature Center here in town, who privately expressed some concerns to me about the case. For one, the individual (who asked not to be named) told me that the explanation involving the “nose-biting feral dog” was just as absurd as I had guessed. In order to verify this, I called a biology professor at the University of North Carolina at Asheville with whom I often corresponded around that time, who similarly expressed dismay at such a clumsy manner of killing. “A dog would never attack any kind of bovine in that way,” he told me.

However, the eerie part of the story had involved the other information provided by my contact with the Nature Center. “Micah, if I may candidly tell you something,” her email began. “There were some very peculiar incisions on the cattle we observed.” She further explained that the ears appeared to have been removed and that in her opinion, whatever the cause might have actually been, “these killings looked just like the kinds of cattle mutilations you’ve seen on the TV shows.”

There was never any clear resolution to the matter, at least as far as why area law enforcement had offered such an absurd explanation for the incident, and why this had seemingly gone unnoticed, apart from my private inquiries with the biologists at the local university and wildlife resource center named here.

Granted, there are any number of factors that might reside at the heart of this mystery. During my talk with Christopher O’Brien, he expressed his belief that the majority of these livestock deaths have an earthly cause, although he does feel that some of the mutilations could involve testing by government agencies (and yes, this sounds very conspiratorial), which might be aimed at offsetting outbreaks of such afflictions as the well known “Mad Cow Disease”, otherwise known as Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and other similar conditions that are specific to livestock of this sort. The same general idea has been endorsed in the past by Colm Kelleher, a biochemist who has engaged in his own first-hand field investigation into cattle mutilations.

Sure, the “secret government testing” hypothesis may sound nutty to a few of us. Then again, is it any crazier than the idea of aliens abducting cattle, for purpose of carrying out their bizarre hybridization programs, as has been long supposed by much of the UFO community? Weighing our options, the secret government testing theory might make as much sense as any.

However, there was a peculiar historical thread that I found worthy of mention here too, as it relates to all of this. Absurd though the “nose-biting killer” theory had been in my own review of a cattle mutilation case local to my region, a similar solution involving a dog involved in highly unusual behavior had been attributed to a classic livestock mass-killing, which occurred in Ireland in 1874. Writing of the incident in his book Lo!, the late-great Charles Fort described the incident thusly:

“For about four months, in the year 1874, beginning upon January 8th, a killer was abroad, in Ireland. In Land and Water, March 7, 1874, a correspondent writes that he had heard of depredations by a wolf, in Ireland, where the last native wolf had been killed in the year 1712. According to him, a killer was running wild, in Cavan, slaying as many as 30 sheep in one night. There is another account, in Land and Water, March 28. Here, a correspondent writes that, in Cavan, sheep had been killed in a way that led to the belief that the marauder was not a dog. This correspondent knew of 42 instances, in three townlands, in which sheep had been similarly killed—throats cut and blood sucked, but no flesh eaten. The footprints were like a dog’s, but were long and narrow, and showed traces of strong claws. Then, in the issue of April 11th, of Land and Water, came the news that we have been expecting. The killer had been shot. It had been shot by Archdeacon Magenniss, at Lismoreville, and was only a large dog.”

Fort, in his typically skeptical manner, had thought little of the large dog explanation, apart from the contention that it was of utmost absurdity:

“This announcement ends the subject, in Land and Water. Almost anybody, anyway in the past, before suspiciousness against conventions had the development that it has today, reading these accounts down to the final one, would say—”Why, of course! It’s the way these stories always end up. Nothing to them.” But it is just the way these stories always end up that has kept me busy. Because of our experience with pseudo-endings of mysteries, or the mysterious shearing and bobbing and clipping of mysteries, I went more into this story that was said to be no longer mysterious. The large dog that was shot by the Archdeacon was sacrificed not in vain if its story shut up the minds of readers of Land and Water, and if it be desirable somewhere to shut up minds upon this earth.”

Fort’s response is hardly surprising. However, it is the similar willingness to except anything that might appear logical, so long it is of a prosaic nature, in response to the seemingly unnatural, which seems to remain constant. A large dog slitting the necks of sheep, and the subsequent exsanguination of their remains only sounds foolish, perhaps, when contrasted against the image which springs to mind as we read the description of a feral dog clinging forcibly to the snout of some poor bovine, and suffocating the poor thing.

In either instance, we may never know precisely what happened to the livestock whose lives were lost, but the death-dealers were probably not the dogs who took the blame. Recognizing this is not to endorse an “alien” theory, of course, though either attempt from such extremities of dogmatic “explanation” might be worthy of ridicule. Thus, the livestock killings, though perhaps greatly misunderstood on such ideological grounds, seem to remain mysterious nonetheless.

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Micah Hanks is a writer, podcaster, and researcher whose interests include history, science, current events, cultural studies, technology, business, philosophy, unexplained phenomena, and ways the future of humankind may be influenced by science and innovation in the coming decades. With his writing, he has covered topics that include controversial themes such as artificial intelligence, government surveillance, unconventional aviation technologies, and the broadening of human knowledge through the reach of the Internet. Micah lives in the heart of Appalachia near Asheville, North Carolina, where he makes a living as a writer and musician. You can find his podcasts at GralienReport.com and his books at Amazon.com

Since at least 1967, reports have surfaced throughout the United States of animals – but, chiefly, cattle – slaughtered in bizarre fashion.

Organs are taken and significant amounts of blood are found to be missing. In some cases, the limbs of the cattle are broken, suggesting they have been dropped to the ground from a significant height. Evidence of extreme heat, to slice into the skin of the animals, has been found at mutilation sites. Eyes are removed, tongues are sliced off, and, typically, the sexual organs are gone.
While the answers to the puzzle remain frustratingly outside of the public arena, theories abound. They include extraterrestrials, engaged in nightmarish experimentation of the genetic kind; military programs involving the testing of new bio-warfare weapons; and government agencies secretly monitoring the food-chain, fearful that something worse than “Mad Cow Disease” may have infected the U.S. cattle herd – and, possibly, as a result, the human population, too. Then, there is the matter of the Sons of Satan; a secret cult that engaged in the sacrifice of cattle to their lord and master, the Devil himself.

The story dates back to 1974 and an inmate of the Federal Penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas. The year had barely begun when one of the prisoners at Leavenworth – a man named A. Kenneth Bankston – penned a letter to a well-known UFO investigator, Jerome Clark. Bankston’s reasoning for contacting Clark was simple enough: one year earlier, in 1973, Clark wrote an article on the cattle mutilation puzzle for Fate magazine. So, Bankston was looking for someone with whom he could share his story – a story focused on the aforementioned Sons of Satan.

Given that the cattle mutilation hysteria was at its height in the mid-1970s, it’s not at all surprising that others, besides Clark, were also writing about the grisly mystery. One of them was Kevin D. Randle, a noted UFO authority. Randle’s article, “The Killer Cult Terrorizing Mid-America,” appeared in Saga, just shortly after Clark’s was published. Both men discussed the “cult” angle, which was gaining more and more interest.

Among those who was interested in the cattle mutilation problem – but who was not overly convinced that it had a connection to the UFO issue – was Dr. J. Allen Hynek, of the Center for UFO Studies. Hynek, at the time, was liaising with an agent of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms – Donald E. Flickinger – who had a personal interest in UFOs. Flickinger, when approached by Hynek, agreed to undertake an investigation into the cattle mutilation controversy. While Flickinger did not find any evidence suggestive of a UFO connection to the cattle killings, he did note that “a certain pattern existed” when it came to the nature of the attacks, the removal of organs, and the significant blood loss.

When Jerome Clark heard of Flickinger’s studies, he provided the BATF agent with copies of A. Kenneth Bankston’s correspondence. Bankston’s story was as eye-opening as it was controversial. The Sons of Satan was a powerful, very well hidden group that had seemingly endless funding and manpower and was led by a mysterious character, only referred to as “Howard.” The secret group was determined to provoke “hell on earth.” And the sacrificial rites were a way to ensure that Satan would aid in the group’s efforts to create hellish mayhem.

U.S. authorities did not dismiss Bankston’s story. In fact, the exact opposite was the order of the day. Flickinger wasted no time in calling the Minneapolis U.S. Attorney’s Office. When the facts were outlined, the office agreed that an investigation should proceed – and proceed quickly. As a result, Bankston and another inmate, a man named Dan Dugan, who asserted he was a member of the Sons of Satan, were moved from Leavenworth to another prison. Whereas Leavenworth was a high-security facility, the situation at the new jail was far more relaxed.

Of course, one could make a very good case that Bankston and Dugan made the whole thing up, primarily as a means to make it appear they were trying to help clear up a very disturbing mystery – a mystery that the government dearly wanted clearing up. In other words, by helping the authorities, the pair hoped that as a “thank-you” they would be moved from the oppressive environment at Leavenworth – which is exactly what happened.

It must be said, however, that this does not mean the story of Bankston and Dugan was without merit. The story was detailed, plausible, and – as far as the police were concerned – was viewed as being far more likely than the sensationalized UFO explanation. Indeed, acting on the words of the two prisoners, law-enforcement officials approached numerous “Satanic cults” in the United States, including Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan. Despite such approaches, the secret order of the Sons of Satan were never found or exposed. Today, the cattle mutilation mystery continues – and also remains steadfastly unresolved.